Expert SEO Interview with Matt McGee

This week, to kick off the next few weeks of interviews focused on the topic of Search Engine Optimization I spoke candidly with Search Engine Land’s Executive News Editor and the editor of her sister site, Sphinn, Matt McGee. He writes the popular Small Business Search Marketing blog, and has been in the field of SEO since it’s infancy back in 1999. He weighed in on a number of topics from the recent infamous Google Panda update to using social media marketing for the purpose search engine marketing.

Elise Redlin-Cook: Google recently made massive change to their algorithm, called the Panda update. Would you like to discuss what this means to the average website seeking rankings.

Matt McGee: I hope it means nothing to the average website! I say that because Panda seems to be targeted at sites that are pumping out low-quality content to with the goal of ranking well, not necessarily with the goal of providing value for site visitors.

And so I think part of the problem might actually be in the question you asked: “seeking rankings.” Rankings never have been, and never should be anyone’s goal. Google doesn’t send you a check each month based on how well your site ranks. But a lot of the sites targeted by Panda were doing exactly that — creating content for Google, not for users.

So I’d tell the average website to stop worrying about rankings. I’ve been saying this for four years now, and when I started my own SEO consulting business in 2008, I steadfastly refused to provide ranking reports to clients. It’s been a joy.

I’ve no doubt that some good sites were caught up in Panda accidentally. To those folks I’d say a few things:

Rather than get angry at Google, step back and calmly try to figure out why. Examine your site as objectively as possible. What made Google lump your site in with the others?

If you’re really doing things the right way — focusing on users, making sure that everything you do is about earning trust — then do more of it, do it better, and make it more obvious

Lastly, this is good advice to everyone: Don’t put all your eggs in Google’s basket. Building a website (or a business) that relies on free traffic from a source that can stop sending that traffic whenever it wants is just asking for trouble.

Elise: When performing an SEO audit, what are the most common problems that you encounter?

Matt: Aside from an 18-month span a few years ago, I’ve worked exclusively with small businesses. So, when it comes to that kind of client/website, there are probably a half-dozen things that I’ve seem on a regular basis and most of them are pretty easy fixes.

URL Canonicalization problems: the website resolves to both www.domain.com and just domain.com, or the home page resolves to www.domain.com/index.html and www.domain.com.

Unoptimized page titles: especially true with small businesses that have no SEO knowledge. The home page title tag is usually just their business name or, God forbid, “home page.”

Lack of content: A lot of small biz owners are really busy and don’t spend a lot of time online, so they mistakenly assume that their customers don’t have time/desire to spend time reading content, researching products and services, and so forth. Big mistake.

Lack of links: Link building is a foreign concept to a lot of small business owners.

No local optimization: A lot of small biz owners are still unaware of opportunities with Google Places, Bing Local Listings, etc.

Elise: What are the most important local search sites that a business should get listed on today?

Matt: Well, Google obviously. That’s where the vast majority of search happens. But I think Bing is also moving in the right direction, and Yahoo shouldn’t be overlooked, either.

After that, I think it depends to some degree on your industry and location. If you’re in the hospitality/travel space, TripAdvisor and Yelp are probably important sites for you. If you’re a restaurant, Yelp and Urbanspoon are probably very important. Lawyers (Avvo.com), Doctors/Dentists (Healthgrades.com and now Avvo.com, too), and other industries have important sites specifically for them.

Elise: If a website has been hurt by poor SEO, how can a good SEO company help restore a site’s ranking and reputation? Does your company fix a lot of sites that have been harmed by bad SEO companies?

Matt: Not necessarily reputation issues, but I’ve been in situations before that involved cleaning up bad SEO. It’s tough. The SEO part isn’t always tough, but the client relation part usually is. You’re dealing with someone who’s already gone through a nightmare (worst case) or just has a bad taste in their mouths about SEO — like it’s now become a necessary evil for them, rather than something they really want to do to grow their business.

So you have extra trust obstacles to overcome in your relationship with the client. You have extra obstacles related to buy-in and follow-through, because the client may not want to bother with all the hard work again.

So, I tell clients and I tell audiences when I speak that everything you do should help you gain trust. Everything!

When I was in that kind of situation, I remember making sure that we did things in baby steps, and did a lot of communication with the client. You know, very actively saying … Here’s what we’re doing this week. Here’s why we’re doing it. Here’s what we hope to accomplish. Just trying to earn that trust. And then making sure to show results — even small wins — to let the client know that things are getting better.

Elise: What are some of the common obstacles with large retailer web sites when it comes to SEO?

Matt: Duplicate content and lack of content are the two biggest issues I’ve seen on the huge retail sites I’ve worked on. Seems contradictory, but it’s not.

Lack of content: I mean very thin pages with little more than the name of the product, available sizes and colors, and maybe 1-2 sentences describing the product. It’s tough to get any SEO wins in that situation.

Duplicate content: I mean things like using the same exact product description that can be found on 20 other sites selling the same thing, and in some cases, having multiple URLs for the same product where the only difference is the color or size.

Elise: What role does social media optimization play in an overall SEO program?

Matt: With one client, we’re using social media as our primary means of link building. We’re using Twitter to connect with thought leaders, journalists and bloggers in the industry. (Facebook, too, but that’s more for direct-to-consumer outreach.) Twitter helps us get the client seen by people who write, tweet and link to trusted resources. It takes some time to build up that trust and authority, but it’s been great for us. (Confession: I hate the monotony of link building and my client hates the hourly cost of it, so this has been a good match for us.)

Social media can play a lot of different roles. It can help sell products/services. It can help establish thought leadership. It can serve as a great customer service tool. All of those are related to SEO — or certainly to an overall business marketing plan.

Elise: SEO is such a broad topic. What do you think is the most important piece of SEO to discuss for the everyday business operating online today?

Matt: It’s all about trust. There’s nothing more important. As consumers, we all try to do business with companies that we trust.

So, I tell clients and I tell audiences when I speak that everything you do should help you gain trust. Everything!

If more businesses understood the value of trust and the need to get search engines and searchers to trust them, they’d probably go about their business in a different and better way.

About Elise Redlin

Elise is the Content & Marketing Manager at Vertical Measures, an internet marketing company in sunny Arizona providing services ranging from content marketing, to social media marketing, link building, and advanced SEO. She’s fully immersed herself into the world of content marketing and content strategy and is the managing editor of this blog. +Elise Redlin

10 Comments

Matt McGeeMay 18, 2011

Thx for the opportunity to do this, Elise! Loved the questions and appreciate the chance to share some thoughts on the VM blog. Say hi to Arnie for me.

InfonoteMay 19, 2011

Nice interview.
For retail sites, it is a bit difficult I guess to provide unique thick content for every product in their line especially if they have 1,000’s of products.

In this case, won;t social media and PPC provide a greater return on investment?

Trust is probably the most important part of building any brand online. People sometimes do not understand what it really means to build trust which is why we still have website owners trying to buy links overseas for .99 cents. We are at a crucial point in the SEO game where we are transitioning away from the mass submission approach and pushing towards a brand/trust building stage. Not everyone is going to be on-board.

ClaudiaMay 19, 2011

I am new to Internet marketing and I have done a lot of research trying to find the best way to optimize my site. It is a very daunting task. Content is so important and I agree with you that trust plays a big part in order to get potential customers to keep coming back. Social media is also something I am considering in order to be seen. Thanks for the info.

SEOzzyMay 20, 2011

Good tips for beginners and small business owners but I wouldn’t call this a ‘expert SEO interview’ as all the info you shared here is also shared by any level of SEOs in all sort of blogs and you don’t really need to be expert to make above suggestions.

How about having a second round with more’expert’ opinions on how to deal with duplicate content, faceted navigation, pagination, etc..?

Brian GreenbergMay 22, 2011

All about trust.
So many businesses just want to find a way to cheat the system, getting involved in black hat link schemes, and outsourcing low quality content creation. Business owners need to understand that SEO, especially organic seo, is an investment in their business. Creating Quality, and yes “trust”, is the only way to ensure long term success.
Great interview.

Emma CoakesMay 22, 2011

I agree that Bing is moving in the right direction. The graphs that I see are heading upwards and at some stage it will hit a tipping point, probably around 10% of the market, where people will really start to look at it. I’m making my time investments now.

PeteS_UKMay 22, 2011

Claudia I have been doing this for almost a year now. Keep at it, it gets less daunting.

I’m really encouraged by Matts main thrust of focusing on content and building trust as this is pretty much the conclusion I have come to. It’s not about trying to outwit Google, rather about giving them what they want i.e trust worthy quality content.

Rock Solid Interview….its funny that those 5 Important Problem areas have been known for years yet the small business owner is oblivious to them.

Everytime I touch a client Website I see them having these 5 problem areas….and YES “Home Page” is often their page title. Makes me laugh.

AlyMay 25, 2011

I like @PeteS_UK’s comment that SEO isn’t about “outwitting Google” – its about giving Google what it wants. Google aims to find the most imformative, factual, interesting content on any given search term, which go figure, is exactly what your potential customers want. How ’bout that?